6:} High As The Moon, Deep As The Charles

A little over two years ago,
Apollo 11 astronauts introduced
the world to the moon up on the TV
in Fontaine's late one Sunday afternoon.


It's a luncheonette opposite Mission
Church where I worked during
seventh grade lunchtimes
plus every weekend.
Hungry Mission
High hordes
stormed
in every day
and they all had
more money than
anyone could spend.

Just seven months afterwards,
a most astounding astronomical
occurrence of any lifetime,
a total eclipse of the sun,
extinguished the early
afternoon for half
an hour, replacing
daylight with the
most disquieting
darkness one
could never
imagine...

It took place as
I explored the buffer
zone between infamous
Mission Hill and respectable
Brookline, down at The Riverway,

where I journeyed hoping to
view the death scene
and pay my respects.

The month before the eclipse,
early in February, two ten year-old girls
playing on frozen Leverett Pond broke
and fell through the ice and drowned.






It was a tragedy of local magnitude,
drawing hundreds to their combined
wakes and funerals from Mission Church.

The newspapers reported that,
once submerged, there was
little chance of rescue,
but their suffering
was mercifully
short,


trapped
beneath
the deadly
cold of the
ice covered
waters.

It occurs to me
I can make it all end
quickly and painlessly as well.
I veer away from the Hatch Shell
onto the ice, stopping twenty feet out,
where black shiny river gently
embraces black shiny ice
with loving, never
ending caresses.

Facing
the heavens
again I tell Him
I can’t go on any
longer, intending
to coerce my
long-awaited
answer.
Temerity
emboldens
my belief that
whatever happens
is meant to be, and
if the ice doesn’t
break, it's not
my time yet.
I begin to
jump on
the ice.
Once.
Twice.
Higher.

And harder.
Two defiant steps
further out, my well
rehearsed performance
wins awards of realization
that if the ice breaks, even
should someone be close by,
I will likely be a
goner.
Again
I jump
as high as
I possibly can,
landing hard enough
to submerge the
meandering ice
shelf beneath
the cold
water.

I now
take five or
six parallel steps
upriver to another
spot, a little
further out.
Three
more jumps
with all the weight
I can muster! The ice
plummets low then
springs back up
each time.
Having
received the
answer I waited
for so long to get,
I inch backwards
toward land,

but genuine fear
now fills my mind with
the very real possibility
that the ice can still break
during the next fifteen feet!
Gingerly and with great care,
I reach the dead grass of
the river bank, look
skyward with
gratitude,
and
begin the
long trek back

to the house on
Cherokee Street,
where the torments
of its dungeon master
ever await my return...